Sunday, July 17, 2011

Brainrule # 4: How to keep children's attention

This brain rule is particularly relevant to teachers.  The way to keep a child's attention is to understand that they will only pay attention for 10 minutes.  The same applies to adults; I recall many occasions in which I have drifted off in meetings or during powerpoint presentations.  According to Brain Rule # 4 I needed to be refocussed every 10 minutes.

The secret to refoccusing your class or audience is to do so in a way that stays with the topic or theme of what is being taught.  A good example of this for me was when I was on a Web 2 course for principals.  The presenter broke the presentation up with the fantastic You Tube clip, 'The Book' (a great choice, as most in attendance were ICT strugglers)

 

Without being aware of the rule I have applied it myself in a presentation that I did on the always enthralling topic of assessment triangulation / overall teacher judgement.  Checking through the presentation you will see that I have added clips that are related to the topic in an attempt to keep the attention of those I was presenting to.

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